


Welcome to the Mere Mortals Club

by Kansas42



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Catholic Guilt, Christmas, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hot Chocolate, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Irresponsible Use of Paint, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 06:41:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16969635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kansas42/pseuds/Kansas42
Summary: “You said once that I believed in God, and you believed in me. Do you still believe in me?”“Always,” Marcus says.(Or, Tomas and Marcus try to take care of each other, often while completely failing to take care of themselves. Pre and Post Season 2)





	Welcome to the Mere Mortals Club

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weesaw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weesaw/gifts).



> Happy Holidays, Yuletide Recipient! I feel obliged to tell you that, at one point, I planned to incorporate your awesome Tattooed Tomas/Speechless Marcus idea into this fic . . . but ended up writing my own totally ridiculous spin on that idea instead. Actually, pretty much all my plans for this fic went a little sidewise, so . . . hope you like it anyway!
> 
> To all other readers: I also hope you like this! A few things:
> 
> A) This is more or less canon, but I definitely played it fast and loose with the timeline and there is technically one element of Supernatural crossover. (You don’t need to be familiar with the show to understand this fic, though.)
> 
> B) Apologies for any unintentional Americanisms and probable Spanish failures.
> 
> C) The awesome creepy song in section III is “The Unquiet Grave" (as voiced by Helen McCrory). I do not own it or anything to do with The Exorcist.

I.

There was a man Tomas knew once, many years ago. This man, he would argue that it rained outside even on a sunny day. He’d tell small children that God was a lie. He’d argue that the Earth was flat if you gave him the opportunity. In short, he was the most disagreeable person Tomas has ever had the displeasure to meet.

Marcus Keane, he believes, may be the second.

“Tomas, don’t you dare—”

“We must go to the hospital. Marcus, your fingers are blue.”

Marcus shoves his hands in his sodden pockets, as though Tomas will just forget the unnatural hue of his skin simply because it’s out of sight. “No, they’re not,” Marcus lies, brazenly, the way he does nearly everything. Blasphemes. Flirts. Jumps into freezing cold rivers, rescuing little old women before the demons inside can drown their hosts. The exorcism on the riverbank had been mercifully short, at least: Tomas had done the heavy-lifting, while Marcus had mostly glowered and trembled like a wounded dog.

Tomas passes the turn-off for the motel and ignores Marcus’s cursing. “Be reasonable—”

“A reasonable exorcist, that’s a bloody joke—"

“You could become hypothermic,” Tomas insists. “You’re shaking like the leaf.”

“ _A_ leaf,” Marcus corrects, gently enough, “and the shaking means I’m _not_ hypothermic. Won’t be pushing up daisies because of a little splashing around.”

“ _A little splashing_ —”

“I’ll be fine once I get these damn clothes off and wrap in a warm blanket or two.” Marcus winks lecherously, though the chattering of his teeth somewhat diminishes his charm. “Unless you’d rather wrap those ludicrously large arms of yours around me instead. What’s your secret? Lifting weighted Bibles whenever I’m not looking?”

Tomas clears his throat and pointedly does not think about holding Marcus close in his arms, warming his partner’s cold, pale skin with his own body heat. He says, “I would never. I added the weights to your hat.”

Marcus grins, even as he trembles violently. “Is that where that’s gone, then? I wondered.” 

They pass another exit. Tomas has still not seen a sign indicating a hospital or any kind of medical services. What kind of horrible place is this South Dakota?

Marcus tips his head. “Are you all right?”

“Am _I_ all right?”

“Well, I enjoy a good lecture as much as any other 50-year old defrocked priest, but you’ve been especially motherly lately. What is it? Bad dreams again?”

Tomas tightens his fingers on the steering wheel. His dreams . . . but he does not want to think on his dreams right now. “If I take us back to the motel,” he says, instead of answering, “you must do what I say. And if I see any signs of hypothermia, I will knock you out with your own hat and take you anyway.”

Marcus raises an eyebrow. “What did you have in mind?”

Tomas smiles and turns around.

*

“You’re not serious?”

Tomas hands Marcus a cup of hot chocolate, complete with whipped cream and tiny, white marshmallows. “It’s almost Christmas.”

“Yeah, and that means we get drunk and give each other presents we nick from the petrol station. This—”

“You agreed you would do what I said.”

Marcus, just out of the shower and huddled under every extra blanket Tomas had charmed out of the desk clerk, stares at the television in horror. “I’ve changed my mind,” he says, as Young George Bailey saves his brother’s life. “Throw me back in the river. Anything but this.”

“It grows on you,” Tomas says cheerfully, and hides his grin when Marcus, now wearing a white mustache, grumbles, “Yeah, like fungus,” and sinks deeper into his blankets.

II.

Three days later, Tomas is the one huddling in blankets. Marcus reads the paper, heats up a can of chicken noodle that’s only a year past its expiration date, and tries not to smirk too obviously at his partner’s misfortune.

“You are smirking again,” Tomas accuses from somewhere beneath the blankets.

Well, perhaps he wasn’t trying that hard. “How would you even know?”

Tomas emerges: flushed cheeks, red nose, utterly fantastic bedhead. It is an absolute crime that Marcus should still want to kiss him when he looks this wretched, but Tomas Ortega is a man of many gifts, including the ability to remain impossibly attractive even when he’s recently contracted plague. “I can hear you,” he says irritably, sniffling into another tissue. “Your smirk is this loud, Marcus.”

He laughs. “Go back to sleep. You’re delirious.”

Tomas does not go back to sleep, which is for the best: Marcus certainly isn’t heating up this sad supper for himself. Reminds him too much of the slop they used to serve at the boys’ home, though this, at least, is edible. Might not smell terrific, but it’s edible.

Tomas does not agree. “You are trying to kill me.”

“Bit of a prima donna when you’re sick, aren’t you?”

“It is _orange_ , Marcus.”

“Well, a bit.”

Tomas snuffles again. There’s an air of self-righteousness to it. “If there were any justice in the world—”

Marcus flops back on his own bed. “Here we go.”

“—YOU would be sick—”

“Well, luckily, I’m not a bloody Jane Austen heroine, and I don’t catch my death just because I got a bit wet.” There’s an easy dirty joke in that, but Marcus decides not to push it; Tomas looks mutinous enough as it is. “Besides, if there were any justice in the world, we’d be out of a job, wouldn’t we?”

Of course, Marcus _is_ out of a job. Oh, he’s got the experience, all right; he’s the teacher, here to instruct his star pupil on all that he knows—when his pupil listens, that is, which is less than he’d like these days—but Tomas is the actual priest here, a true vessel of God, and Marcus is just . . . along for the ride, really, waiting for God to start speaking to him again, _if_ He starts speaking to him again. Lately, that seems less and less likely.

There used to be such noise in his head, this symphony, this _cacophony_ ; he could never escape it, never rest. It filled his mind, flooded it; everything boiling over, all purpose and madness and conviction. If God would only be quiet, if Marcus could just _think_ \--

But now it’s all gone silent, and Marcus is alone with his sad, ugly, endless thoughts.

“There is, you know.”

Marcus startles and glances over at Tomas, who’s peering at him. The earnestness on his face is appalling. “There is what?”

“Justice in this world.”

Marcus laughs bitterly. “Oh, is there? Right then. Must have missed it between that possessed nan carving up her grandkids and every bloody acolyte from here to Chicago, looking to integrate with some bastard from Hell.”

“Yes,” Tomas says simply. “I think you did.”

Marcus glares at him. “I think I preferred it when you were whining about soup.”

But Tomas won’t take the bait, just leans forward and says, “Marcus. What is wrong?”

_What’s wrong_? Marcus thinks incredulously. _God doesn’t need me anymore. Maybe you won’t either, soon enough_. Though that might be for the best, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. Tomas is . . . gifted, beautiful. Marcus will only ruin him. 

_What’s wrong_? Marcus almost laughs. _What ISN’T_?

He considers saying all that, laying himself bare, waiting for Tomas to comfort him, to hold him, to fix him. He considers saying it, but not for long: an exorcist who dwells on hopeless fantasies only gives the Enemy that much more ammunition.

Instead, Marcus says, “Well, your picky eating habits, for one,” and threatens Tomas with the orange chicken noodle until his partner, disgusted, retreats beneath his blankets once more.

III.

Tomas has the dream again.

He’s in a hotel of some kind. The green wallpaper is rough and peeling away, the carpet mustard and stained with questionable fluids. The whole building has a faint and horrible smell: stagnant water, fermented wine, rotten meat.

_And if you kiss my cold clay lips  
Your days, they won’t be long_.

A song is playing, something strange and haunting. It’s a woman’s voice, one he doesn’t recognize. Marcus probably would, of course. He loves music more than anyone Tomas has ever met, listens to it constantly, trying to fill up all the empty spaces—or perhaps drown out some louder, internal noise.

Where is Marcus?

But that’s a silly question. Marcus is at the end of the song. 

(How does Tomas know that? Is it impossible knowledge? No, of course not, he’s safe, he’s _clean_ \--)

He turns a corner, following the music, and the motel becomes a labyrinth of sorts. No one is here. No one has been here in a long time, and yet Tomas cannot shake his certainty that there are eyes, somewhere, watching him. He starts pulling away the crumbling wallpaper, but he finds nothing behind it except painted red birds and strange, black symbols: pentagrams encircled by flames . . . or is that a sun . . .

The lights flicker, then go out entirely. The song is very loud now. He can hear it in his bones.

_How oft on yonder day, sweetheart  
Where we were wont to walk  
The fairest flower that e’er I saw  
Has withered to a stalk_.

Marcus is waiting for him. Tomas feels his way forward; the walls are spongy and damp to the touch. “Marcus?” he calls, as the smell grows stronger. “Marcus, are you here?”

_When will we meet again, sweetheart?  
When will we meet again_?

“Marcus!”

Suddenly, Tomas can see.

He’s standing in a large, shadowed basement without much in the way of personality or even furniture. There is a large oval mirror, a small bedside table, and a small bed, complete with sweat-soaked sheets and ominous leather restraints. Someone was tied down here recently, a prisoner. Tomas turns away from it, sick, but when he looks in the mirror instead . . .

“No,” he whispers. “No puede ser cierto.”

“Tomas.”

The song. Tomas cannot hear the song anymore.

He turns around. Marcus is on his knees, dressed in dark jeans and a black silk button up that has been left unbuttoned. His chest and stomach are pale. Tomas wants to touch him desperately, begins to reach out even as he thinks, _But Marcus has no shirt like this. Where is his jacket? His ugly sweater_?

Reluctantly, he forces himself to step back. “Marcus?”

Marcus’s eyes are unfocused. Blood trickles from his lips as he begins to sing. “ _When the autumn leaves that fall from the trees are green and spring up again_.”

Tomas shakes his head, confused. “I don’t understand. What is happening—”

Abruptly, Marcus turns to stare at him. “Don’t listen to it,” he hisses, his fingers violently scrabbling at his bare chest. “This wasn’t your fault, Tomas. Remember that.”

But it is. Tomas saw it in the mirror, in his third pupil. This is all his fault, his most grievous fault. “Marcus,” he says, reaching for him now. “Marcus, please—"

But as Marcus reaches back with bloody fingers, a redbird erupts from inside his chest. It flies away, disappearing into the darkness, and what’s left of his partner collapses dead on the floor.

*

“Tomas. _Tomas_.”

He blinks awake, gasping. Slowly, Marcus’s face comes into focus: he’s standing over Tomas, hands gripping his shoulders. With great difficulty, Tomas meets his eyes and nods. His breath comes much too fast.

“There you are,” Marcus says, obviously relieved. “You’re all right now. It was just a dream.”

“Was it?” Tomas whispers without meaning to.

His dreams are not always just dreams. It was his dreams that led him to Marcus, after all, and there have been others since, ones he has not yet spoken of aloud. A blonde woman rocking a dead child, an infant. _Cindy_ , he thinks. She needs help, and quickly.

These are not normal dreams. They are messages. He is certain of it.

But Marcus will not want to hear that, Marcus, who is so very wary, who never trusts Tomas’s judgment if it contradicts with his own bitter and lonely experience. He treats Tomas like a child, despite the obvious fact that he can barely look after himself; how many years has he spent by himself on the road, recklessly diving into rivers and stitching up his own wounds? How many cheap motel beds has he nearly died in, choosing fevered prayer and abhorrent soup over an actual doctor? At times, it makes Tomas seethe, how bullheaded Marcus can be, how little he listens to reason. Other times, Tomas’s heart hurts for him, a child thrown into a world of devils. Who has ever cared after Marcus? Who has treated him as a person, not merely a blunt instrument, a weapon to be used?

How quickly he’d fallen, how silent, that gaping red hole in his chest.

Right now, Tomas’s heart hurts for himself: quick, short stabs of fear.

“You’re all right,” Marcus is still saying, surprisingly gentle. He’s sitting on the bed, a reassuring hand on Tomas’s arm. His face is very close, as it usually is; Marcus has very little sense of personal space. “This line of work, it plays with your head. I’d be worried if you didn’t have nightmares.” He shifts, clearly on unfamiliar ground. “Do you . . . need to talk?”

Yes. He does. But what can he say? _God is warning me. I’m frightened for you. Please don’t leave; I need you by my side_. These are all impossible words. Trying to say them only steals his breath faster. 

Tomas only manages to murmur, “You left,” before quickly averting his eyes.

Marcus is quiet for a long time. 

Then, continuing to ignore all sense of personal space, Marcus leans closer and says, “Yeah, well. Doesn’t sound too likely. You’re stuck with me, I’m afraid.”

IV.

But of course, Marcus does leave eventually. He shoots Andy Kim in the head, and he runs away. He can’t bear to stay and pretend he’s worthy of anyone’s grace, let alone God’s. He can’t bear to stay with Tomas or anyone else so willing, so eager, to forgive him.

He runs and he finds a shit room in a shit town with a shit job. He drinks, more than he should. Gets into painting. Has a knack for it, even manages to knock down his rent some by charming the miserable landlady with a few acrylic renditions of her cats. Mostly, he focuses on just making it to the next day, then the next day, and the next, trying to push the memories aside, hoping he won’t dream . . . until one afternoon, without warning, everything inside his body is alight with noise: destructive, glorious, beautiful _noise_.

“I hear you,” Marcus says, and then, agonized, “Tomas.”

*

Later, he’ll learn it’s Bennett who shoots him. 

Later—after scouring the ends of the earth, searching for his former partner, after finding him restrained and barely conscious in the basement of the desolate and shuttered Redbird Inn. After finding the bowl of ash hidden beneath the bed, after taking Tomas’s hand and whispering a litany of prayers. After begging, “Stay with me, hermano,” and seeing Tomas’s eyes open. After feeling something punch through his back and out his chest; after seeing too much red splatter the wall and floor and bedsheets.

Later, weeks later, Marcus will learn how Bennett was turned, the same way the Enemy tried to turn Tomas, the same way they thought they’d turned Mouse. He’ll learn that Mouse and Tomas became separated months ago, that she’d discovered a protection symbol of some kind, one which would repel exactly this kind of demonic takeover. He’ll learn that Mouse promptly had the symbol tattooed on her right arm, that she’s the only reason Bennett’s second bullet didn’t go straight through Marcus’s heart.

Later, he’ll learn all these things. Right now, Marcus only knows that he’s dying.

He’s on the floor. He doesn’t remember falling. Tomas is kneeling over him, holding both hands to Marcus’s wet and ruined chest. He’s saying something, but Marcus can’t hear him; he can’t hear anything over the desperate sounds of his own lungs, wheezing and hissing and sucking. Has God left him again? He can’t tell. He can’t feel anything but torment, but suffocation and fear. Will God forgive him? He doesn’t know. There’s so much he doesn’t know, so much that he never said or will ever do.

But Tomas’s eyes are his own again, so whatever happens . . . Marcus has no regrets.

“Marcus!” Tomas’s voice finally breaks through. “Marcus, you must stay with me. Quédate conmigo. Marcus, Marcus!”

And when Marcus cannot stay with him, when he feels himself begin to sink into that deep and unrelenting dark, Tomas touches his face with bloody fingers and kisses him deeply.

Later, much later, Marcus will say, “Cheating.”

V.

Christmas comes.

Tomas and Marcus are snowed in at the same motel room they’ve been at for weeks. Marcus is healing up nicely; naturally, he’s been completely insufferable about it. 

(“See,” he’d said yesterday, after standing upright for ten minutes. “Fit as a fiddle.” Tomas had glared at him. “Fiddles should not _wheeze_ , Marcus.”)

Still, Marcus is making remarkable improvement. Tomas isn’t healing quite so fast.

Physically, he’s fine: the drugs have long since flushed out of his system, the bruises on his wrists and ankles already healed. His soul remains untainted; his heart, however, is burdened with guilt. Guilt for what has happened to Father Bennett. Guilt for blindly walking into a demon’s trap. Guilt for bringing Marcus back into this life. Guilt for the great reluctance he feels at the thought of losing him again.

They have only spoken briefly about the kiss. Tomas apologized. Marcus teased. For a moment, he thought Marcus might say something more . . . but he grew flustered, nervous. Tomas did not press him.

It does not feel as awkward as Tomas had feared. Perhaps it is better, they approach . . . whatever this is between them . . . slowly.

He gets out of the shower, pulls on a pair of sweatpants, and vigorously scrubs at his face with both hands before exiting the bathroom. Marcus is sprawled across the bed—Tomas’s bed, naturally—and talking on his cell phone. “That was Mouse,” he says, hanging up a moment later. “She gives her regards.”

Tomas, sinking beside Marcus, looks at him dubiously.

Marcus grins. “All right, what she actually said was, ‘Tell that partner of yours to stop moping,’ but in her heart, that’s what she meant.”

Tomas ignores this. He forgot to grab his sweater before he sat down, but he’s too exhausted to get up now. “How is Father Bennett?”

“Same. Won’t tell me where she’s keeping him yet. Seems to think we’ll do something dumb, like rush off and try to exorcise him immediately.” He shrugs. “Don’t know what gives her that idea. Cautious to a fault, that’s us.”

Tomas snorts softly and looks away. “I’m still surprised she hasn’t . . .” He can’t finish the thought.

“Yeah, well. Bennett’s always been a supercilious bastard, but spend enough time with him and somehow, he becomes _your_ supercilious bastard. Don’t think Mouse could go through with it.” Marcus’s smile is lopsided, his eyes downcast. “Besides, I hear integration isn’t as permanent as it’s cracked up to be.”

Tomas does not look at him. “I think perhaps I was lucky with Angela Rance.”

“Blessed, I’d say.” When Tomas says nothing, Marcus pokes him. “And now, what? You think that’s blessing’s gone, just because some demon came close to tricking your soul away? You think Bennett’s to blame for what happened to him, too?”

“Of course not,” Tomas says, angry but unwilling to meet Marcus’s eyes. “It’s not the same. I, I have failed before. Andy—”

“I’d say I failed Andy more than you did.”

“That’s not—” Tomas makes a low, frustrated sound in his throat. “I cannot lose again, Marcus. I cannot . . .”

He shakes his head. There aren’t words for all the things he cannot bear to lose.

Marcus shifts on the bed so that he’s facing Tomas. “I used to think like that, too,” he says, leaning in so close Tomas cannot look away. “Mouse was my first failure, the exorcism I wasn’t strong enough to finish. And Gabriel, he was the first child, the first life I ever lost. Thought it didn’t matter, anymore, all the people I’d helped before. I’d failed, so I could fail again, would fail again, inevitably. That fear broke me, Tomas. You put me back together.”

Tomas’s throat is too tight. “Marcus—”

“Here’s something the Church never taught me about being an exorcist, something I didn’t learn until I met the best, most badass nun in Chicago: failure is in the job description. You _are_ going to lose again. Maybe with Bennett, maybe not. Maybe not for years. But eventually, it’ll happen, and when it does . . . you have to keep it going, anyway.”

“How? How do you bear it?”

Marcus snorts. “Poorly,” he says. “But you can do better. Just remember that . . . it’s not your failures which define you, but your mercy, your compassion, your choice to keep standing in the doorway, holding back the night.”

Tomas closes his eyes. “I’m so afraid,” he admits softly. “For all those I might let down, might disappoint or lead to harm, but also . . . for myself. I fear for my own soul.”

There’s a long pause. Then, “Is that a confession, Father Tomas, because that just sounds like bloody good sense to me.”

Tomas, startled into laughing, opens his eyes. Marcus is watching him, smiling. The deep crinkles around his eyes somehow seem kind, and Tomas is struck by the sudden urge to kiss them. Instead, he says, “Perhaps I’ll feel safer when we get our own tattoos.”

It won’t happen anytime soon; even without the snowstorm, Marcus is certainly not well enough for having his skin punctured thousands of times by a needle. He still gets tired very quickly, his breath often running out before the ends of sentences.

Marcus doesn’t seem concerned by the wait. On the contrary, his eyes are gleaming with some unspoken mischief. Tomas watches him suspiciously. “What are you planning?”

Marcus’s smile only widens.

*

This is how Tomas ends up lying on his stomach, Marcus painting—actually painting—the mysterious warding symbol on his back.

This should feel ludicrous. It _is_ ludicrous, and yet . . . there is something so strangely _intimate_ about the experience, about feeling Marcus paint such slow, careful lines across his skin. The paint is cold and wet, but Marcus’s hands are dry and warm, and Tomas feels strangely safe beneath them.

But.

“Will you leave again?” he asks finally. He has to ask, even if he’s scared to.

The brush stills briefly.

“No plans to,” Marcus says. His voice is uneasy. “But nothing has changed, Tomas. I’m still . . . stained. I can’t be the vessel God needs or the partner you deserve.”

“God has brought you to me,” Tomas says. “You are already the partner I deserve, and the only one I want.”

Marcus doesn’t say anything.

Tomas resists the urge to look back at him. “Failure is in the job description,” he says, “but so, too, is forgiveness. You must forgive yourself, Marcus. Eventually, you must.”

Marcus resumes painting. “I don’t know how,” he says, after several minutes.

Tomas considers that. “You said once that I believed in God, and you believed in me. Do you still believe in me?”

“Always,” Marcus says.

The certainty in his voice makes Tomas smile, even if he’s not sure that he’s earned it. “I believe in you,” he says. “Perhaps that is enough, for now.”

Marcus falls silent again as he finishes painting. “Let that dry,” he says, and puts on his coat and shoes. Tomas, alarmed, starts to get up—Marcus should not be out in this cold, it is terrible for his breathing—but Marcus waves him off. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’ll only be a minute. Or don’t you believe in me anymore?”

Tomas makes a rude gesture, and Marcus shuts the door behind him, still laughing. He probably only needs a moment to be alone with his thoughts. He is surely not leaving. He is surely safe. No demon has abducted him in the few moments he’s been gone. No choking fit has collapsed his lungs in the middle of the parking lot.

He’s fine. He is.

Tomas slides off the bed anyway, reaching for his shirt, when Marcus walks back into the room, shaking snow out of his short hair. There are two Styrofoam cups in his hand. Tomas stares at them.

“Motel clerk’s stash,” Marcus explains, handing one over and shuffling nervously. “Afraid I couldn’t charm her into giving up those tiny white marshmallows, though. Don’t got those big puppy eyes of yours.”

Tomas, who has long pretended ignorance about the effectiveness of his puppy eyes, sits back down on the bed and says, “I don’t know what you mean.”

Marcus only snorts and takes a long sip from his hot chocolate. “I can’t promise,” he says eventually, “that I won’t leave. It’s a hard habit to break.” He hesitates, then sets the cup aside and kneels beside the bed. “But I’ll always come back, no matter what. I’ll always come back for you.”

Tomas does kiss Marcus, then, gently squeezing his paint-stained fingers.

“I know,” Tomas says. “And I will always wait.”

-FIN

**Author's Note:**

> And later, Tomas and Marcus DO save Bennett because damn it, Bennett is precious and MUST BE SAVED.


End file.
